We were reminded this week why the race to dominate Ai will be fierce and fought globally. With the introduction of DeepSeek R1which made claims of being developed on a shoestring $6mbudget over the course of 2months with only 200 staff and more importantly being 95%cheaper with Api requirements with open source code. And once they were put to the test, DeepSeek outperformed ChatGPT o1 significantly. Its early days, and with China not permitted to use Nvidia H100sthere is already speculation that there was far more compute used to get to this point. Time will tell what’s really going on.
But for now it’s opened up a healthy debate around costs directly related to LLM and most importantly that decentralized GPU projects built on blockchain start to look really attractive. We think this is a win for projects like Aethir, Render, IOnet, 0g Labs, Bittensor.
The end of 2024 was wild. Setting up for what will be a very interesting 2025. Bitcoin closed the year off around $94 000 setting the stage for a push to new all-time highs. We reached that shortly after Trump’s inauguration hitting just below $110 000. You get the sense that most traders, investors are all anticipating the Trump effect on the US economy and in turn, the global economy.
With this renewed confidence we saw Bitcoin ETF inflows for the first time in many weeks exceed $1B. While we may see the usual volatility, it’s no surprise to see demand for Bitcoin increase. Saylor has kept up his buying strategy now holding an immense 471 000 Bitcoin worth $47B. His average buying price is $63 000 showing a healthy 60% ROI.
The US presidential inauguration went off without any ‘glitches’. However during the preceding weekend we witnessed the late night launch of a memecoin aptly named “TRUMP” race to $75B valuation as liquidity was drained from the market hitting many altcoins hard.
Many industry insiders left flat footed watching the spectacle from the sidelines. Whatever your views on this was, it was nothing short of spectacular. It seems Barron Trump has a real handle on this entire game. And he won. Big.
